[Design] [Proposal] Making syncing b/w Desktop and Web dead simple

[Mimi Yin]

As I was helping someone set up their Chandler Desktop + Hub account  
yesterday, it was kinda painful to watch them try to understand all  
the explaining I had to do:

+ No, not all of your collections will be automatically in your  
account once you set it up.
+ You need to publish them individually. Yes, even if you don't want  
to 'publish' them so that other people see it. Even if you just want  
to sync it so you can see it.
+ No, not everything will get synced automatically if you set up on a  
different computer. Only stuff that you published, but not stuff  
you've subscribed to.

We've always known this is a VERY HARD problem to solve. So we have  
justifiably punted really solving it. Morgen in the past couple of  
releases has made huge improvements by making it so that at least  
published collections are automatically synced when you set up you  
Hub account in Chandler. But I'm wondering if we really need to do  
more, soon because this is one of the most compelling things about  
Chandler for many new users (backing up your data onto a server,  
being able to access it from the web and the ability to keep multiple  
machines in sync) and we don't support it well.

So what's missing?

1. 1-click put all of my collections on the server always.
2. Keeping subscriptions in sync between Desktop + Hub.

I'm essentially proposing a 'Set-up a sharing account' wizard:
1. Set-up sharing account.
2. Pop-up asks you if you'd like to keep your Desktop and Hub  
accounts in sync?

(I've logged this issue as a bug: https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/ 
show_bug.cgi?id=11594)

===
Sync Manager
-----
Would you like to keep Chandler Desktop in sync with your Chandler
Hub account?

(  ) Keep all collections in sync, all the time
(  ) No thank you, I will manually publish collections to Chandler Hub

 >> Configure what collections you would like to keep in sync

[Don't Sync]							  [Sync Later] [Sync Now]

===

3. If you click on the 'Configure' carat...

===
Sync Manager
-----
Would you like to keep Chandler Desktop in sync with your Chandler
Hub account?

(  ) Keep all collections in sync, all the time
(  ) No thank you, I will manually manage what collections

 >> Configure what collections you would like to keep in sync
You have collections in your sharing account(s) that are not synced.
Which of them would you like to sync?

[  ] All collections in <ACCOUNT NAME>
    [  ] Collection 1
    [  ] Collection 2
    etc...

[  ] All collections in <ACCOUNT NAME>
    [  ] Collection 1
    [  ] Collection 2
    etc...


===

OPEN ISSUES
+ Morgen: What happens if you have already subscribed to collections  
you previously published to Chandler Hub and then you set up our Hub  
account? Can Chandler figure out that they're the same collections  
you have on the server and rationalize them?
+ It's kind of weird from the Desktop perspective to have an OOTB Hub  
collection sync down to Chandler Desktop. Can we delete this  
collection for the Desktop user if the user hasn't added anything to  
it from the web UI?

There are also content modeling improvements we need to make in order  
to have it all work truly well. Mainly, you always want to share all  
attributes with yourself, but there are some attributes you never  
want to share with others (Read/Unread, Alarms, BCC:). Would this  
relatively 'dumb' fix work to address this issue?

+ We add Read/Unread/Needs reply status to the list of sharing  
filters; and
+ When you publish, we change the default sharing filters to select  
everything; but
+ When you subscribe, we set the default sharing filters to only  
check Triage Status + Event Status.

Mimi

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